A Pre-Birthday Message For My Husband

Posted on January 28, 2016

Dear Ralph,

Your birthday is coming up soon and since I won’t be able to see you that day, I thought I’d share some private thoughts…publicly! Yes, I know. I’m living up to your favorite nickname for me; “What’s Wrong With You?” Well, do you remember a week or two after we started dating when you asked me point blank “How do I know you’re ‘the one’?” However I answered, there was no way to tell you almost 21 years ago what we now know today. What is that? Let’s see if we can figure it out.

We two, you and I, have spent these years making one helluva team. You’ve taught me many valuable lessons; to ignore you when you say “do as I say, not as I do,” to question when you tell me where you think something is, and to do something nice for you anyway even after you explicitly tell me not to. You love these things. Secretly. But you love them. And it took me a long time to learn these lessons, but my life is much less dramatic and far easier now that I have.

I’ve had the pleasure of watching you and that questionable friend of yours—the one who calls me her nemesis, Miss Kim—help raise an adult child you both took responsibility for adopting. A Taser might have been kinder than using a firm hand when it came to discipline, though, and yielded better results. Just my humble opinion.

We’ve traveled the world, shared muffins at Selfridge’s, had more kinds of hot chocolate than I can count, shopped for candy bars in Japan and London, bought Lime Pepsi in Toronto, had romantic dinners in Palm Springs, Pizza Hut in Hong Kong, enjoyed the airline lounge in Paris, and shared Korean fried chicken in New York.

You opened your world up to include me, subjected me to your grandmother, and I in turn opened my world up to you, including subjecting you to my mother. Things have been pretty even between us in that respect. Heck, things are even in our friendships too. I remember meeting your friend in Chicago at his party and remarking “I heard you got around!” I, of course, didn’t realize he was getting around behind his boyfriend’s back and with the guy standing next to him. By the same token, I told you my one author friend looked forward to talking to you again in the future, and you texted back “Do you know the look dogs get at the pound before they’re euthanized? That’s the look I have on my face right now.” Our friends can’t help but adore us.

And as much as we’ve been through life, we’ve also been through death together. I don’t joke about this part. You trusted me with your father and to help with him when you had to be back at work. And I trusted you when I resigned from my job to help with my father. You trusted me to keep things in order and to make a home for us after your father passed. The trust we put in each other isn’t one that comes easy. It comes from time.

It’s easy to think that there must be a ‘one’ in life. The truth is there are probably many, but the trick is finding ‘one’ who you make a helluva team with. And that’s us. Am I ‘the one’? I’m your ‘one,’ and that’s a title I accept with pride.

Happy Birthday, my husband.

I love you!

PS: And stay away from that Miss Kim character. Girl can’t drive for $hit and she actually makes you look like a safe driver.

________________________
Kristoffer Gair (who formerly wrote under the pseudonym Kage Alan) is the Detroit-based author of Honor Unbound, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Sexual Orientation, Andy Stevenson Vs. The Lord Of The Loins, Gaylias: Operation Thunderspell, several short stories featured in anthologies (to be combined in a forthcoming book), the recently re-published novella Falling Awake, its sequel, Falling Awake II: Revenant and Falling Awake III: Requiem.